This is why I am going back to school for an MBA and looking for roles outside of software engineering. Being a SWE is a great way to make decent money immediately out of school, but the reality is that, unless you're a true standout, it's hard to justify your cost as a senior engineer versus someone a few years out of school. You might think you can "make better decisions in most practical situations," but the reality is that you probably can't - at least not in a meaningful enough way to justify your significantly inflated cost versus a younger engineer to an employer. The experience curve in pure software engineering is asymptotic or perhaps logarithmic at best, and the situations in which additional experience matters are rare. In contrast, the impact of a good manager, recruiter, financier and so on is limitless. My peers that went into investment banking, consulting, and the corporate world are now getting director and vp titles, making partner at prestigious firms and so on. In 5 years they will be blowing me away financially unless I change something.<p>Like you, I've come to realize our interview process is stupid, despite taking part in it probably 100s of times by now. In fact, I think the entire concept of rank and hierarchy in software engineering is stupid. I'm tired of the pendantic arguments we get into, the endless architecture debates, design docs, managers using phrases like "impact at scale", listening to L7 wind bags spout off abstract technobabble and so on. In the end, I had to conclude that most of it is bullshit. I've seen the pattern enough times at some of the most iconic companies of our generation to determine that this is actually the way it works in most cases. It's as though we took the corporate hierarchy from 1950's GE and tried to apply it to the software engineering profession, when, in reality, software is much more like a trade. Ultimately, I think it stems from some sort of superiority complex or need to feel as though we are progressing towards something, so we set up a bunch of rules and hoops to make it difficult for others to reach our status as a vaunted FAANG engineer.<p>Ultimately, I had to look at myself in the mirror and think about my business value. For now, it's possible to ride the tidal wave of demand for software engineers at a select group of companies that happened to stumble upon a money printing machine. However, I'm not particularly confident that abundance will continue. My advice would be to take this as an opportunity to pivot into something that will allow you to more dramatically differentiate yourself professionally. Everyone and their mom is studying computer science these days. Companies are discovering they can hire remote developers. And, as you're discovering, this is no career path for old souls.